To the Big Bang Control Centre in Docklands where Reuters is preparing to convert its 520,000 terminals worldwide to the euro in one fell swoop at 1800GMT on Sunday January 3.
Over the last few hours banks have been testing their systems by putting dummy forex quotes on the Reuters screen. The plan is to blank down the screens, then accept only genuine quotes thereafter. But some banks in Australia are already doing euro spot and forward forex deals for real while some European banks have left on their automatic quote updates and gone home to bed.
"We have computers that track the range of the quotes," says Reuters euro project director Geoffrey Sanderson. "There's always the possibility of some wildly out-of-range figures."
If a bank quotes wildly out of line, Reuters can take it off the system. But these quotes aren't necessarily out of line, they're just being updated with preposterous frequency. Worst offender is Merita Bank in Helsinki, every 30 seconds updating its rate for the yen or sterling against the euro, then switching to the euro against the Swiss franc, Norwegian krone, even the Czech koruna and the Hungarian forint.